Tag: Children’s Privacy

Britain the “Surveillence Society”!

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10 April 2007

07:42

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Did you know that Britain has by far the most cameras in the world – about one for every 12 people or approximately 5 million in public and private hands! Police and the Home Office are planning a significant upgrade of the CCTV network with new laws that would require camera operators to ensure that their equipment produces images good enough for police investigations. All spurred on by Government claims that it is needed to fight terrorism. I would like to see some evidence that supports the use of surveillance cameras is a price worth paying for the loss of personal privacy of the majority of the law-biding public. There must be more effective methods of achieving their goals for the ‘fight against terrorism’?

Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, said: “Surveillance in Britain has now reached a level equivalent to Russia and Malaysia. If something is not done soon to reverse this trend privacy will be extinct within a decade.”

British schools use biometric software to record the data of children

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5 April 2007

10:28

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When I was at the LSE conference in London I listened to Terri Dowty that discussed the growing trend on surviellance of children in the UK, starting with kindergarten. I was thus concerned to come across the following article this morning that up to 3,500 schools use biometric software to record the data of approximately three quarters of a million children. Children’s data stored, often include photographs and fingerprints, is stored on unregulated data collection systems and potentially insecure school computer networks and could therefore potentially be misused; notes that collecting the data from children under 12 without parental consent directly contravenes the Data Protection Act.

For more information on what is going on that impacts your children in the UK take a look on Action Rights for Children website (ARCH). For a more global picture take a look at LeaveThemKidsAlone.com

Descriptive analysis and inventory of profiling practices

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2 April 2007

14:21

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A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a great lecture by Mireille Hildebrandt at LSE on profiling. I have since found this great paper that describes the profiling practices. Moreover her lecture linked this into privacy the DPA deficiencies in this area, and also offline profiling that includes RFID, sensor technologies, etc., thus turning the offline world online!

Imagine a biometric behavioural profile such as a ‘smart car’ that knows when you get tired. A ‘smart car’ that either refuses to start or pulls over to the side of the road when it detects this. What about a ‘smart home’ that detects your needs based upon your behavioural patterns? I think she called this ‘environment profiling’ that anticipates your needs maybe even before you do yourself. In order to do this the environment must know enough about you in order to be able to make decisions for you, this means the collection of personal data -either knowingly or unknowingly- using online or offline technologies…..

So what does that mean to us? Simple, choice is taken away, our environment anticipates for us what we need or should need. I wonder if this means that in the future our children could develop with a reduced capability to make decisions, if simple daily choices disappear? Maybe this is nothing, and could be compared with the use of the pocket calculator and the reduced capability of my generation and beyond for mental arithmetic? However I do wonder if children in 20 years time will understand what it means to have privacy?

Stolen laptops hold info on 11500 children

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1 April 2007

19:52

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I received this last week whilst I was away skiing. (Thanks Victor!)
Three laptops containing personal information on 11,500 children were stolen earlier this month from a National Health Services office in the United Kingdom The laptops contained the names, addresses, and dates of birth of child patients between the ages of 8 months and 8 years old!

I think this is of interest to all of us, as it can affect anyone of us if our, or our children’s private information happen to be stored on somebody’s laptop at any time, and this laptop is at risk of being compromised.

Shouldn’t they have had stronger measures in place to prevent this from happening? Doesn’t this make it a violation of the DPA if so?

Have you got a store card?

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25 March 2007

12:10

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I don’t, never had. I remember the first cards coming out in the UK about 15 years ago, Sainsburys, Tescos. The buzz words were ‘data warehousing’. I didn’t want my buying habits stored in some database somewhere for someone to data-mine my life!

I am not completely honest in saying I’ve had no store cards, I have, well sort of. Every couple of years I have a moment of weakness…. would be so nice to be invited to the first day of sales in my favourite boutique. I filled an application out for a store card a couple of months ago, gave them my personal details, they sent me the card, and then -the moment of weakness passed- I did the same as what I’ve done every other time, cut it up and threw it in the bin.

Why do I do this? After all we have the Data Protection Act here in the EU. Our information is safe…… or at least that is what we think. I was so glad that I held my stance on the use of store cards when I listened to Meireille Hildebrandt -at LSE- earlier this week , a lawyer who has linked her expertise with a subject domain called ‘profiling’.

Profiling is ‘data-mining’ and finding pattern recognition. The challenge is -given the amount of information collected on each of us- is distinguishing the noise from the information. Profiling is an vast area and I will write something more about this when I get back from a week’s skiing in the North of Sweden. So watch this space……

On the cusp of a new surveillence age

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23 March 2007

19:53

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So how is this?
We are living in a unique time today that will not last long, we are on the edge of a cusp for a new age of surveillance. So what do I mean by this? Bruce Schneier gave a compelling picture of the future -at LSE earlier this week- he started with today, one where we know that there are cameras everywhere and that we can see them, are aware of them! However…..

– In 5 years time they will be so small that they will still be everywhere but out of our sight.
– We will probably be unaware of ID checks being made on us.
– We will get location-specific advertising, e.g. walk past Starbucks and see a personalized advert.

What is more, we will start to accept this. Maybe even agree to keeping a ‘life recorder‘ in our lapel for a small reward at the beginning. It could be later that it becomes the norm, after all it provides us with an alibi if we happen to be implicated in a crime in some way. It could be that by not wearing a ‘life recorder‘ is an indication of our guilt because we ‘have something to hide‘!

For myself, and I expect anyone reading this would find this vision for the future somewhat disturbing, but unfortunately any research that I have done concerning consumer habits and acceptance for the sharing of personal information for some small reward -e.g. 5cents discount on a chocolate bar- it is not such science fiction given the advances in surveillance technology today and expectations for the future.